Priest Profile

Father Kevin Barrett didn't have an ordinary start to the priesthood. The former para-medic was ordained by Pope John Paul II and personally wished well by Blessed Mother Teresa.

Father Barrett doesn't have an ordinary parish, either. As chaplain of the Apostolate for Family Consecration in Bloomingdale, Ohio, located on the grounds of Catholic Familyland, he's on the front lines promoting the culture of life among families from all 50 states.

Father Barrett's own road to the priesthood began in a strong Catholic family in Chicago, but he lost his way for a while. “I found myself like many youth drifting away from the faith, despite attending Catholic high school and Notre Dame University,” he recalls.

He had a sophisticated education in science and math, but “religion got marginalized out of my life because of inadequate formation,” he explains. Add the influence of peers and media, and it's not hard to understand how a young man could have his ears blocked to God's still, small voice.

After college he worked first at a psychiatric hospital, then as a Chicago Fire Department para-medic — “the catalyst for my own personal conversion,” he calls it. There he came in contact with “evil at close range” and confronted death every day, seeing it in the faces of victims of violent crimes, drug overdoses, accidents and suicides.

He instinctively turned back to the rosary between emergency calls. “Our Lady completely turned my life around as a result of the ignorance and moral malaise,” he says, looking back. He also credits the prayers of his father, one of the first in the permanent deaconate program in the Diocese of Joliet, Ill., and his mother, who entrusted him to our Blessed Mother.

Next, he went with his mother to Lourdes, France. “It wasn't until I went through the bath of Lourdes that I realized I had to go to confession,” he says. “I had been years away from the sacraments.”

Six months later they were at Fatima, Portugal, on May 13, 1982, when the Pope was there thanking Mary for saving his life a year earlier.

“I had this very blessed experience being there with 2 million people for Mass with the Pope,” Father Barrett says. “It was like a premonition of heaven, like thousands of saints cheering the queen as she approaches the king.”

That did it. “After that Mass, I said, ‘Okay, dear Lady, I'm yours. Whatever you want. You want me to be a priest, I'll be a priest.’”

Papal Servant

Blessed Mother Teresa, an adviser of the Apostolate of Family Consecration, seemed to echo all this later on in his ordination. When the going gets tough, she wrote Father Barrett in a note, “Cling to Our Lady at such times. Ask her to teach you how to pray and how to love. She will keep you only all for Jesus — a holy priest of God.”

Providentially, on his return, he met Jerry and the late Gwen Coniker, who “were inspired by the Fatima message to found this apostolate to propagate heaven's peace plan through Marian consecration, the rosary and allowing her to help us live our baptismal consecration,” he explains. That was in 1982.

In 1992, John Paul ordained him in St. Peter's Basilica. Then he was assigned to a lifetime chap-laincy to guide this international family ministry.

“The Family Apostolate is so focused on John Paul II and his writings and his whole emphasis on the renewal of the Church through the hands of the family,” Father Barrett says. “For me to be ordained a priest for this family apostolate by His Holiness was a dream come true.”

Besides, while studying in Rome he sang in a choir for all the papal Masses and had the extraordinary privilege as a seminarian to serve the Holy Father's Mass seven times in St. Peter's Basilica.

The “greatest theology class I had,” he says, “was going to the Masses and watching this saintly Pope offer Mass.”

Now families such as that of John and Debbie Kukula of Omaha, Neb., find Father Barrett himself a model of reverence celebrating Mass, especially at the consecration. “A priest like Father Barrett is truly an inspiration, reminding us that the Real Presence of Jesus comes to us on earth — body and blood, soul and divinity,” John Kukula notes.

The Kukulas have traveled with Father Barrett on two pilgrimages to Rome.

“Whenever he takes us to a religious location in the city, he's not just a tour guide, he is leading us in prayer,” Kukula continues. “He reminds us of that in his actions during the entire pilgrimage.”

On the Kukula family's trips from Omaha to Familyland events, Debbie Kukula has observed that, when Father Barrett prepares to give the homily, “he always asks people to pray the Hail Mary with him for inspiration. He's always open to the Holy Spirit.”

Msgr. George Yontz, pastor of both St. Peter and St. Stanislaus churches in Steubenville, Ohio, notices the priest's “gracious gentleness” whenever appearing on “The Roman Observer,” a program Father Barrett hosts on the apostolate's TV network. Msgr. Yontz saw that goofs or something requiring retaping didn't bother Father Barrett. “It's an acknowledgment of our frailty — always a good quality.”

Besides the miracle of daily Mass, Father Barrett finds teaching families the spirituality of family consecration another “miracle” most satisfying.

He explains: “They also have the miraculous power by the virtues of their sacraments they received — baptism, confirmation, marriage — to transform the ordinary elements of their family activity — the trials, sufferings, joys, sorrows — into the most sublime divine reparation for sin.”

With a twinkle in his voice, he adds, “I always had two great desires as a little kid — to be either a priest or a fireman,” Father Barrett says. “God has a sense of humor. He let me do both. I tried to put out fires as a fireman; now I'm trying to set a few.”

Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.